“You faker.” Both food and water bowl were nearly full. “You just wanted attention.” She crouched beside the cat and scratched behind her ears, then rubbed the soft fur beneath her chin.
She uncorked the chardonnay she’d planned to drink last night. A collection of mismatched glasses gathered over the years filled half a kitchen cupboard. “No,” she told the cat. “We’re going to do this right.” Though she hadn’t begun the formal inventory, she knew where her grandmother’s wedding china and glassware were kept, in the built-ins that lined one dining room wall. They’d used the pieces on holidays and special occasions, the gold-rimmed white dishes and the ruby crystal with its delicate gold filigree. Back through the swinging doors they went, she and her feline shadow.
But the glass-front cabinet was empty. Not a wine glass or a dinner plate in sight. No champagne saucers. No decanter or serving bowls.
“Where did it go?” she asked the cat, busy licking a foot.
In the kitchen, Sarah rinsed a glass printed with the Chateau Ste. Michelle logo, a souvenir from a wine tour they’d taken her parents on years ago. Poured and took a sip, the tang of fruit and flowers filling her mouth. Carried the glass outside.
How funny was it, to be five hundred miles from home drinking wine made not ten miles from home?
It was a moment Jeremy would have noticed, acknowledging it with a slight lift of the glass and a wink.
Her therapist had said those moments would hit her hard for a while, but that gradually the pain would ease. Everyone said that—don’t make any drastic changes for a year, don’t dwell on the past, blah blah blah. But remembering and dwelling weren’t the same. She didn’t want to forget Jeremy’s laugh, or the way he always said “look at you” when she came downstairs in the morning. How he took his coffee, with cream and honey, not sugar. Forgetting the details would be like losing him all over again. Besides, those moments were part of her life, too.
She raised her face, eyes closed, and let the spring sun kiss her.
Was she crazy to think she was supposed to be here right now? That the lodge needed her?
She didn’t know what to think anymore.
Lucas. So much promise destroyed by his pride and stupidity. His life upended. Michael dead. Jeremy had not been one for regrets or second-guessing himself—he’d left that to her—but it had always bothered her, that they hadn’t been able to stop Lucas from attacking Janine or from tearing away in the red convertible.
Now they were all gone, those beautiful young men from that beautiful day on these shores, twenty-five years ago.
Leaving her to face the sad, sucky fact that life went on. Kids finished papers, studied for exams, made summer plans. Of course the kids would fledge. That was the point of raising kids. They left the nest. But did it have to be right now?
Sarah heard a sound and cocked her head. Heard Janine calling indistinctly. Letting her know Nic was driving down the lane?
One last swallow, then she headed inside, setting her glass on the walnut table next to her grandmother’s rocker, the table’s barley-twist legs dust-free thanks to Peggy. Now she could hear tires crunching on the gravel and Janine calling out hello. A car door closing.
Then, a second door? Had Nic brought her family? Tempe must be fourteen or fifteen by now, but she would be in school. Or was it just the sound of the back door as Nic got out an overnight bag?
Then Sarah heard the voices.
She watched from the doorway as Janine released Nic from a hug and turned to greet the other woman. Not a teenager at all. It was her sister. It was Holly.
What the hell was she doing here?
8
An invisible band tightened around Sarah’s chest, squeezing out all the air. Bad enough that when they’d gathered at the house after Jeremy’s funeral, she’d overheard Holly on the phone saying “so much for her perfect life.” Meaning her, Sarah. Meaning the cracks in their relationship had become gaps too wide to bridge.
Now Holly was here, not fifteen feet away, glaring at her. But in her own fury and confusion, she couldn’t read her sister’s eyes.
Maybe she never could. Maybe she never had understood her only sister.
“What are you doing here?”
“I called her,” Nic said. “She caught the first flight.”
“But why? This isn’t bridge. We didn’t need a fourth.”
“I want a chance to explain,” Holly said.
“I don’t want your explanation,” Sarah snapped. “Mom asked me to help her with the lodge. We don’t need you.”
Holly’s fair skin paled and her neck stiffened. She was being cruel, Sarah knew. And she didn’t give a damn.
“I came because of this.” Holly pulled an envelope from her brown leather bag and held it out.
And Sarah’s very bad feeling got even worse.
* * *
“It has to have come from him,” Janine said a few minutes later. “From Lucas. No one else knows everything that happened.”
Outside the four of them, a point that hung heavily in the air over the dining room table, swirling like the cigar smoke of a hundred years ago. The letter lay on the table. Cups of tea and coffee and glasses of wine sat, untouched. That one of them could have done something so awful, so hurtful, was impossible.
Or was it? Sarah shuddered involuntarily, and she drew her wine glass closer. It gave no comfort, the smell, the thought of drinking it turning her stomach sour.
“Plus it doesn’t make any sense,” Nic said. She sat across from Sarah, her back to the view. “The letter says ‘only you know the truth.’ That can only be one person, not two. Not both Holly and Janine.”
“He didn’t expect us to talk to each other,” Holly said. “But how could he have known …” She let the words trail off, the question unfinished, its import clear.
“You mean, how could he have known we aren’t close anymore?” Nic asked. “Not like we were, anyway. He could only know if he’d talked to one of us.” Her piercing blue eyes rested on each of them in turn, but no one flinched.
Could Lucas have heard the truth from someone else? Jeremy might have told him, innocently enough, that “the girls” had drifted apart. That would have been years ago, though—he hadn’t talked to Lucas in ages. He’d reached out to a lot of people from the past as he got sicker—she’d find him in a T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, on his phone, his dog-eared address book on the table next to him, dialing away. Well, not dialing. The address book was hilariously retro, when you thought about it, for a tech guy. He hadn’t been a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs tech guy, whose name and products everyone knew, though his banking apps and payroll accounting software touched a lot of lives. But Lucas? No, she couldn’t imagine Jeremy making that call. He’d known how she felt.
But then, she couldn’t have imagined anything that had happened in the last few months.
“You ever run into him?” Holly asked Nic. “Professionally?”
“I haven’t talked to Lucas Erickson since law school,” Nic replied. She’d grown up in Billings, in the eastern end of the state, and had gone back there after graduation. “Other than seeing him across the room at a seminar or two, our paths never crossed. Not that I minded.”
A movement caught Sarah’s eye. Janine had stiffened, her jaw tight, her shoulders rigid.
“How did you know he lived in Deer Park?” Sarah asked.
“I googled him,” Janine said sharply, but a flush crept up her cheeks.
“What? You saw him, didn’t you? Recently, I mean. Did you at least tell Leo?” Not waiting for an answer, she swiveled her attention from Janine to Holly and back. “We have to tell Leo. About your letter and about—I can’t believe you saw him and you never said. You sat right here and you never said.”
“It was more than a year ago.” Janine’s voice held a note of irritation. “I’d delivered an order of desserts to a restaurant downtown and when I walked out, there he was. Standing on the sidewalk, in a suit, talking to so
meone. It was near the court—I assumed he came down for some legal thing.”
“Did you talk about—what happened?” Holly asked. “About any of us?”
“We didn’t talk at all. I just stood there and he—” She clenched her jaw and swallowed hard. “He recognized me right away, I could tell, and he had this look on his face. A sneer, like he thought he had some kind of power over me. Then he just walked away, like I wasn’t worth acknowledging.”
“He didn’t threaten you?” Nic’s tone was probing but careful.
Slowly, Janine shook her head.
Unbelievable. This was all so unbelievable. Sarah scanned the letter again. Unless … She sat back and folded her arms, hands gripping her elbows. “Unless there’s something else only you two knew. You two, and Lucas.”
“No,” Janine snapped. “I told you everything that happened. How he got me into the cabin. What he did, what I said. How he wouldn’t stop and I finally got away and ran. You saw me, all of you. And I told the sheriff everything, fat lot of good it did me.”
“But the letter,” Nic said, “is suggesting there’s something you didn’t say.”
“There isn’t,” Janine said, leaning forward, biting off the words. “There isn’t. We told them everything.”
No, they hadn’t, Sarah knew, but it wasn’t Janine keeping the secret. Secrets, plural. Did Nic and Janine know Holly had invited the boys to the lake so she could cozy up to Jeremy? Did they know how much Holly hated her, envied everything she had? Not that her sister didn’t have a good life, with a great job and a trendy urban condo. Let it go, her therapist had said. He didn’t reciprocate, never even knew. If you want a relationship with her, you have to let it go. The memory of the admonition started the stupid song playing in her head. Abby had been eleven or twelve when Frozen came out, too old to put on her favorite princess dress when they went to the movie theater, but not too old for a tiara. Sarah had worn one, too, borrowed for the occasion. Abby’s tiara sat on a shelf in her bedroom, not part of the ridiculously large wardrobe she’d taken to college. The image of that tiara, shining into the silence in the house in Seattle, tore at Sarah’s heart.
At this rate, she would have no heart left, the muscles and arteries ripped to shreds for the birds to pick.
Deep breaths, her therapist would say. She inhaled, heard how thin and ragged her breath was, how short the exhale. Focus. In, out, in, out.
As for the rest—well, Holly knew part and Jeremy had known part. But no one had known it all, not even her therapist. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything now.
“Sarah? Sarah.” The sound of her name brought her back to the room, to Nic pressing a hand on her arm.
“It’s okay. I’m okay.” She shook Nic off, tried to shake off their concern. She was tired of everyone’s concern, at the same time that she craved it. What a mess she was.
“Okay,” Nic echoed, not sounding convinced. “The question is, what does the letter writer want? Or what did he want, if it was Lucas?”
“You don’t seriously think it wasn’t him?” Holly said.
Nic held out both hands. “I’m saying we’ll never get to the bottom of this if we don’t consider every possibility. We can’t start with a conclusion and get anywhere.”
Across the table, Janine closed her eyes. Though she was forty-seven, she looked like a teenager right now, younger than Abby, and scared as hell. Sarah ached to comfort her. But that wouldn’t help them get at the truth, would it?
Janine opened her eyes, exhaling heavily. “Okay. Every possibility, right? No matter how unlikely. No matter what other—issues it might create.”
All for one and one for all, Sarah thought. She stifled the urge to squirm. Any movement more substantial than the flicker of an eyelash and the fragile peace would shatter.
Janine took another deep breath before speaking. “What if the letter isn’t referring to the wreck? What if it’s referring to my mother?”
“Oh, God,” Sarah said. “But what would that have to do with Lucas?”
“Or with me?” Holly asked.
“Nothing, as far as I know. But you said”—Janine glanced at Nic—“every possibility.”
“Go on.”
“That was the year my mother died. Sarah had already moved to Seattle when the shooting happened,” Janine said, “but you two, you were my rock. I’m not sure I’d have made it through without you.”
“Yes, you would have,” Nic said. “You’d have found the strength.”
The bare facts were brutal. Sue Nielsen had fought with her boyfriend and kicked him out. He’d come back later to get his stuff but she’d been drunk and mistook him for a burglar. She’d shot and killed him. The hard life had ruined her health, and later that fall, in jail awaiting trial, she’d developed pneumonia. The end had been mercifully quick. Sarah was focused on her new job and interior design classes, and on helping Jeremy get back on his feet, literally, though she’d have come home if there’d been a service. But Janine had decided against it. No one would come, she’d told Sarah, except out of pity, and she was probably right.
“I never told anyone that my mother called me,” Janine said. “After the fight, but before he came back. I was too ashamed to admit that I didn’t take the time to listen to her.”
They were silent, making sure they listened now, as she told the story. Finally, Sarah spoke. “I’m so sorry. But would it really have made a difference?”
“Maybe,” Janine said. “Maybe it would have.”
If not then, if not that, some other tragedy would have struck. Sue Nielsen had been a magnet for bad luck and bad choices. But Sarah could see how Janine might have blamed herself, especially after the attack and the crash, and spun out of control. Hadn’t she married Roger Chapman, a poor choice of her own, not long after her mother’s death?
“I don’t see how that could be connected to the letter,” Nic said. “Since Holly got one, too. Do you?”
But no one did.
As if by unspoken agreement, they all stood, Holly heading for the powder room, Nic and Janine for the kitchen. Sarah took her phone out to the deck, the display alight but the bars flat.
Must be some kind of gadget that would solve the problem. She’d ask the repair guy when they picked up Janine’s phone. Though overgrown as the trees around here were, she’d probably need to call NASA.
Who would ever have imagined she’d give an eyetooth for a landline?
What a mess they all were. Blaming themselves for the past, for what they hadn’t done. Except Nic, who’d called when Jeremy died, and made a generous donation to hospice in his name.
But when Sarah had asked about Kim, Nic’s wife, and their daughter, Nic had said they were fine without elaborating. Were they fine? Not fine? Should Sarah have asked more questions? Nic had never been one to avoid difficult conversations. But she’d seen too often in the last two and a half weeks that death silenced people. They worried about saying the wrong thing, so they said nothing, which made her feel even worse. Like the thing ripping her apart wasn’t worth mentioning.
She and Nic had been so open with each other back in college. Though the last half hour had made painfully obvious that the relationships between the four of them had shifted. The other three still seemed close, while Sarah, once the ringleader, had become the outsider.
What was she going to do about that?
Or about her kids. Or her mother and the lodge.
And the letter. They had to call Leo. She could not lose sight of one simple fact: Lucas Erickson was dead, and Janine was the obvious suspect. Although surely there were others—an a-hole like that had to have rubbed plenty of people the wrong way, starting with his ex-wife. What leads was Leo pursuing? Who was he talking to? She knew squat about murder investigations, but she did remember the investigation into the car wreck. The road had been closed for hours while sheriff’s deputies and highway patrolmen took pictures from every angle and measured barely visible marks on the road, a
ll while Jeremy’s once-beautiful red car had sat, impossibly crumpled, tangled with the body of the dead moose. Peggy and JP had come out. Mary Mac, thank goodness, had been traveling with friends, though the news deeply upset her when she returned. The sheriff—Sarah didn’t remember his name—had insisted on interviewing the girls alone. He hadn’t told her he wouldn’t pursue the assault charges; no, he had never been that blatant. But she’d understood the message, and she’d gone along.
Once when Noah was four or five, he’d been playing with a set of toy cars and smashed the red one into a dump truck with a gleeful little-boy shrill and Jeremy had nearly lost it. She’d managed to drag him out of the room, where Noah couldn’t see him, and the boy had never known there was a problem, but the man. Oh, the man. Jeremy had gone sheet-white, sitting on the edge of their bed with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.
When she thought about that terrible day twenty-five years ago, it was the sounds she remembered most. But if she closed her eyes and peered into her memory, it was all there. And the clearest image, the one she could still see in living color, hear, smell, touch as if it were unfolding in front of her right now was when the EMT jumped into the back of the ambulance and pulled the door shut behind him, and his partner flicked on the lights and drove off, rushing Jeremy to the hospital. Had she honestly, truly known in that moment that she and Jeremy were meant to be together, that he had to survive so they could build a future?
Yes, she had.
“Oh, Jeremy,” she said out loud, her hands steepled against her lips. “What am I going to do?”
WEDNESDAY
Nineteen Days
9
The wind worked at the corners of the shutters on the front windows, picking them up and slapping them down. Picking them up and slapping them down. Pick, slap. Pick, slap. Slap, slap, slap.
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